A new story from CNET today highlights how employees at Silicon Valley companies, including Apple, are struggling to balance professional demands with childcare while working from home. For its part, Apple says it is taking several steps to help its employees through this transition. Apple says that it has increased communications with managers and employees during the coronavirus outbreak. This includes encouraging employees to ask “for help or accommodations,” but managers have also been told to “proactively help employees, too....

NYC Resistor recently found an old Macintosh SE on a Brooklyn street and noticed an interesting easter egg buried in the ROMs after doing some digital digging. According to NYC Resistor: So…an Apple team apparently hid four of its own images in the Motorola 68000-era Macintosh nearly 26 years ago. Cool. NYC Resistor is now calling upon readers to identify the mystery employees. Go to the hacker blog to also learn more about the discovery’s engineering-side....

Apple and Broadcom were hit with a more than $1 billion penalty in January for infringing upon patents held by the California Insitute of Technology. Following that decision, Apple pushed to get one of the Caltech patents in the case ruled as invalid, but that quest failed today. Bloomberg Law and Reuters report that the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled against Apple’s bid to overturn the decision....

The German government has announced a change in policy over the weekend, and now favors the Apple/Google contact tracing approach for the coronavirus over the rival one proposed by the European Union. Apple, meantime, is pushing an alternative term designed to emphasize the benefits over the methodology … Germany had so far backed the Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (PEPP-PT). This works in a similar way to the Apple/Google API, but with one crucial difference: instead of Bluetooth codes being stored locally on your phone, they would be uploaded to a central database....

Kicking off the WWDC 2018 keynote today, Tim Cook announced some updates on App Store progress. There are now 20 million Apple developers creating apps. Another big milestone, Apple has now paid out $100B in revenue to developers. We’ve seen several reports of how the App Store redesign that came with iOS 11 has improved traffic and downloads. We’re sure to learn more about how iOS 12 will continue this trend to provide a better experience for developers and users alike as the keynote and WWDC 2018 continues....

Apple has been celebrating Global Accessibility Awareness Day all week, highlighting its Accessibility features and sharing the stories of those who use them. To cap off its celebrations, Apple yesterday held a concert at its headquarters with Stevie Wonder… Apple held the concert as part of its annual “Beer Bash” festivities, which in the past have featured artists such as Pharrell Williams and Zane Lowe. A plethora of images have emerged on social media showing the gathering of Apple executives and employees for the concert, which was kept a surprise until the day of....

The lawsuit between Oracle and Google is inadvertently revealing some confidential information about the companies. It has already been disclosed that Google paid Apple a $1 billion fee in 2014 to keep Google as the default search provider for iOS Safari, as well as a revenue sharing agreement where Google gives a substantial portion of the iPhone search ad revenue to Apple. Another lawyer from Oracle has also stated that Google has generated $22 billion in profit and $31 billion in revenue from Android in its lifetime, via Bloomberg....

Apple is running a special promotion on some Beats headphones right now, offering rare but notable discounts on Powerbeats Pro, Beats Solo Pro and fourth-gen Powerbeats. This is not the first time Apple has done special discounting on its Beats line, but it isn’t exactly common and the price reductions are significant. Whilst these aren’t the lowest prices we’ve seen for these items, they are not bad at all and some of the best discounts the Apple Store has ever had....

Apex Legends is gearing up for its Grand Soiree Arcade event this month, which is adding new game modes and some very dapper looking character skins. Apex Legends was developed by Respawn Entertainment and launched on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One last February. The game was a total surprise for the gaming community as there was no prior marketing or announcement before the game released and most assumed that Respawn was working on another Titanfall title....

At its education event, Apple has announced new versions of its iWork suite. Updates to Pages, Keynote and Numbers for iPad will bring rich integration with Apple Pencil. Pages will also integrate book authoring features, as a replacement for the iBooks Author Mac app. With the new updates, users will be able to add drawings and annotations to Keynote, Numbers and Pages documents just by writing on it with the Apple Pencil stylus....

Apple announced its 2012 Apple Design Award winners this afternoon at Moscone West after the opening keynote. Apple opened this year’s award nominations in late April, but today we get a look at who won. The winners received a hefty load of prizes, including: a special lanyard to commemorate the event, a new MacBook Air, a new third-generation iPad, an iPod touch, and the good-looking ADA trophy seen in the image above....

Apple is making some big improvements for gamers in the coming releases of iOS and OS X, and not just the new standardized gaming controllers we told you about previously. Not only is Apple introducing enhanced leaderboards, improved challenge modes, and new turn-based gaming features, it is also providing developers with tools to combat and prevent cheating. Head below for details on everything Apple is doing in iOS 7 to improve the gaming experience…...

Last week Apple posted a video showing how the calligraphy mural painted at one of its upcoming Chinese retail outlets was created just days before that store opened to the public. Today the company has posted a new video of a second mural, this time at its new Chongqing location. The store features a unique cylindrical entrance, and Apple commissioned two artists—a China-based painter and US-based photographer—to collaborate on the artwork....

After unveiling the new iPad at today’s event, Apple officially confirmed it would continue selling the iPad 2. The entry-level 16GB Wi-Fi-only iPad 2 will get a price drop to $399. The Wi-Fi+3G model will sell for $529. The price drops will presumably take effect immediately, because preorders for the new iPad begin today. Apple March 7th iPad event Liveblog (9to5mac.com) Apple drops 16GB iPad 2 to $399, $529 for Wi-Fi + 3G (9to5mac....

Now this speculation seems set to climb even higher with a source telling Business Insider that Apple engineers have been engaged in frequent trips from Cupertino to China. “A source tells us a system integration engineer friend of his at Apple has been ramping up his travels back and forth between China lately, broadcasting word of his travels over the Internet,” the report claims. What makes this even more interesting is that engineers are currently booked to head to China across the Holiday season, meeting with Apple’s manufacturers out there, presumably Foxconn, who we were earlier told has been contracted to produce 300,000 of the still unannounced tablet-type devices (dubbed ‘Slate’ according to the NYT) each and every month....

After introducing the iPhone 5c last fall in 16GB and 32GB variants at launch, Apple later added a cheaper and admittedly space-constrained version in a number of non-US markets around the globe. Apple’s position on the device’s purpose was that it offers a more attractive price while still offering LTE (unlike the iPhone 4s) in markets where the faster network is well desired. A few weeks ago, The Times of India reported that Apple was poised to introduce the 8GB variant of the iPhone 5c to iPhone buyers in India, and today The Times is reporting that Apple has indeed introduced that cheaper version of the colorful iPhone as was rumored and expected....

From 9to5Toys.com: Apple is using the upcoming London iTunes festival as a convenient excuse to revive its Apple TV iTunes gift card bundle. Beginning today and running through September 30th, all Apple TVs will be accompanied by a $25 iTunes gift card. The iTunes credit can be used to buy apps, music, movies and anything else Apple sells in its digital marketplaces. It cannot be used to purchase physical items or service from the Apple Stores....

Apple Music already offers a three-month free subscription for new users, but now Apple has announced an interesting Christmas deal. As of today until the end of 2019, you can subscribe to Apple Music without paying anything for the first six months. First spotted by Macworld UK, the campaign comes through the Shazam app, which is also owned by Apple. Shazam is a famous app used to identify songs that are playing anywhere, and now its users will have access to a great offer for Apple’s subscription music service....

Apple today has made its Support app available for download in the United States. Last month, Apple released the app in select countries, but only today has it officially come to the United States. The app allows users schedule repair appointments, a feature that was recently removed from the actual Apple Store app, as well as to view AppleCare services and more. Here’s how Apple describes the app: The new app tracks what products you might need support for by viewing the products associated with your Apple ID....

AirPlay Mirroring shown with an iPad 2 and an Apple TV Sources familiar with the future of Mac OS X say that AirPlay Mirroring and an iMessage application are currently in development. Although neither project may see the light of day, they are definitely on the table for release in future versions of OS X Lion. AirPlay Mirroring for the Mac will allow a user to wirelessly mirror exactly what is shown on their Mac’s display to an Apple TV connected to a projector, television, or external monitor....